final preparations

i'm a loaded gun. a few signs that we're close to having a baby:

1. my belly matches the contour line of my oval mirror


and check out that belly button! part of my daily exercises is to try to push it back in, but sadly to no avail. turkey is done.

2. to our utter delight, my parents' antique piano they gave us as a wedding gift came last week, so we're now all ready to lull the baby with our melodic renditions of chopstix (please ignore that giant hole in my sock. putting socks on is such a production these days as it is, let alone CHANGING socks after they're already on because of a measly hole)


(p.s. looks almost identical to my photoshopped version of the room, huh?? it's almost like i took that picture and just photoshopped myself in)

3. milo's claimed his favorite baby toy by dragging it into his bed this morning to cuddle with it. sorry baby, i don't think you're getting that one back. first come, first serve


4. our conversations these days consist of: "why are you limping?" "i'm not. i'm waddling."

and not that it has anything to do with anything (except it might detract the baby from wanting to be born into such a kooky place), but i'm pretty sure this girl i saw the other day on pearl street wasn't wearing any pants

broomball

i feel really really jipped right now. how come i've never heard of this sport?? broomball: like hockey only you have brooms instead of sticks, you're hitting a small soccer ball type thing and you wear shoes instead of skates.... i'm sure the equipment gets more progressive once you reach the big broomball leagues, but hello - how fabulous is this??

of course, i could never play it because of my deathly allergy to walking on ice (i really do think it's an illness of mine. it used to take me an extra 20 minutes - yes 20 minutes to walk to school on an icy day because my legs stiffen right up. quite a curse), but why oh why don't any of my friends play broomball so i can at least go and watch? i promise i make a good cheerleader!*

i can only imagine the entertainment value of watching this sport in person.

*unless i bring a really good book and am the only person in the stands... sorry about any and all times you've made a really good hockey play while i'm there, the boy, and my nose is stuck in a book...

the real benefits of living in a technologically savvy world

looking for that perfectly unique christmas gift that'll scream "this came from me?" and don't worry, it's only slightly less creepy than how angelina jolie used to wear a vial of billy bob thornton's blood around her neck to show how much she loved him. (is it funny that i subconsciously used the spelling "vile" initially? i think not)

picture this: a LARGE artistic portrait of your very own dna or fingerprint hanging over the fireplace in your loved one's family room. cozy. what, not sexy enough for you? looking for something a little more santa baby-ish? how about your lip print, yes lip print, as artwork?

it's probably a good idea to ask yourself before giving this gift: "do i ever plan on committing a crime where they might find my dna/fingerprint/lip print? if so, maybe i shouldn't have a giant picture of it hanging up somewhere..."

and if you're really considering this gift, you might also want to ask yourself: "have i lost my marbles?"

cast your vote!

(a pregnancy montage from month 1 to week 33. turns out those two pregnancy tests we took didn't lie)
welp, we're coming down to the wire here people! it's started to occur to me recently that i'm probably not going to be the first woman in the history of the world to stay pregnant forever... these things really do pop out at some point!

my pregnancy has been AWESOME and with just over one month to go, we're feeling pretty ready (aka, we've thrown our hands up and taken on the mantra "we'll figure it out") to welcome lil' miss flagg into the world.

we know you're all at least as excited as us and chomping at the bit to see what in the world we've been cooking up, so we wanted to see how good your intuition is and have a little contest. the winner will get a really great prize (we haven't decided what it'll be yet, but we're thinking we could mail you her first diaper or something. a true honor) the contest has two parts:

part 1 - what will lil' miss flagg's birthday be? some information that might (but likely not) help:
- her given due date is december 30
- only 1% of babies actually come on their traditional due date. a much better due date indicator that takes into consideration a lot more factors (30% accuracy) actually says her due date will be january 9. quite a difference there
- first time momma's are known to run over their due date. which due date? we're not really sure...
- see, i told you that info likely wouldn't help

part 2 - what should we name the lil' one and why?* if we choose your name, you'll get a REALLY great prize. like the first SEVERAL diapers and maybe the first used burp rag or something fancy like that.

ready, set, go!

* according to our doctor, there is a 4% chance the baby comes out a lil' MR. flagg, so feel free to cast boy names too.. you never know. poor guy better like pink!

i didn't learn photoshop in college for nothing!

yesterday, we spent our entire evening finally decorating our front room. in real life? nah, in photoshop of course!

it started with our room - nice and bland, but don't worry, room - we've got big plans for you


we found a "seat and a half" (how funny that that's the real name of a piece of furniture?) that we liked, but it's pretty freakin huge (notice the lovely striped fabric down the front of the couch?)


so, to see just how huge it will be (we were taking very special consideration the make sure everything was sized correctly in our room... that might be a lie...), we decided to add the piano stool that we're SO excited to get from my parents this month. okay, so we're getting the piano too, but we figured it'd be the stool that would be running into our huge chair. (plus we threw a rug in for good measure)


here's the thing with the boy, though. he's not content with just a seat and a half. he needs someplace to put his feet up. like a freakin huge ottoman to match the freakin huge chair and run into the piano stool even more!


and then we figured, we may as well throw the piano in there just to see how crammed it's really going to be (i know, i know - it's a little bit 2-d and nothing's blended quite right, but you get the idea...)


and, of course, we couldn't feel good about our music room until it was fully decorated with some musical stuff on the walls


pretty cozy, huh? and to top it all off, the boy woke up this morning to tell me about the books we can put on the coffee table we get for the room... wha? coffee table in the room too? wow...

and then it occurred to us, why does anyone ever decorate their house in real life? it's such a hassle buying and moving furniture. we're just going to decorate everything in photoshop.

so, what do you think? will you come visit us in our virtual music room? is this a total and complete disgrace of any and all design skills i should have learned from you, mom? at least we got an elton john album cover up on the wall...

also, our whole evening reminded us of this video (you will be sad if you don't watch this whole thing):

halloweeng highlights. mwuah hah hah

throughout meghan's entire childhood, she called halloween "halloweeng." i'm not sure why and i'm not sure what that has to do with anything except that it's funny.

our halloweeng started off with a little banjo billy haunted house tour with red idea. now, if you've been a fence sitter about visiting boulder, banjo billy is definitely a reason to start looking into flights.


yes, it really is an old school bus with the top ripped off and replaced with a pitched roof, then covered in a fence to look like a log cabin.

and yes, the seats were really ripped out and replaced with recliners, love seats and saddles.

and yes, it takes people on daily historical (or sometimes ghost) tours around boulder. i can't believe you're still reading this and not buying an airline ticket already.

we weren't really supposed to dress up for this ghost tour and we might have been the only ones dressed up, but like that's gonna stop us. introducing:

pretty sure we look even better than the original

halloweeng continued with a morning of "family yoga" at yo mama yoga. "family yoga" on halloweeng morning means "dress up in costumes with your babies and sit them in the middle of the room to climb on top of each other while you do as much yoga as you can in your costume and while peeling your kid off the other kids." while we aren't quite in that stage yet, we were invited to come if we brought our popcorn machine. amazing the friends that come from owning that thing. i think the best part was when the baby lobster crawled on top of the baby spider and starting chewing on her head.

they also had belly painting there for those of us with bellies. here's the baby's first halloweeng costume!

and don't worry, we didn't forget our other babies. introducing yoda. do or do not. there is no try


and darth vader. the force is strong with this one.



and finally, introducing our jack-o-laterns, which we liked so much we kept inside so we could enjoy them... is that wrong? le ghost (don't judge. he's a little blurry. you try taking a picture of a ghost!)


and le cat

and instead of facing the thousands of drunkards in costumes wandering around Pearl Street, we journeyed down to hang out with the fam (err.. i mean, the ghostbusters, a posh golf club dude and g.i. jane...) to play some sweet sweet rock band. ahh. the perfect halloweeng.

snow day

one of my favorite things about having a little dog manifests itself when there's 31 inches billion (and still falling!) of snow on the ground.
it's a cruel world for dogs when their toilets are covered by more snow than they can even stand in.

he'd jump into a pile of snow, disappear for a second, try digging an area where he could at least squat, give up and jump back out. Half a dozen attempts left him doing what every dog despises doing - peeing on the patio

and when he comes back inside, he's got a nice little set of nature-made UGGs on (please ignore my lovely face).

...one of my favorite things about snow days is that it gives you the uninterrupted time to plow through your entire inbox, organize all your files, practice the guitar, read a little bit and still have time to do things like take pictures of your dog peeing outside and then blog about it.

babies r bite size

everytime i go into a baby store, like babies r us, i'm so overwhelmed by all the "necessary" crap in there, my face probably looks something like this.

luckily, i've discovered a couple of things to help make it all better for me:

1. www.babysteals.com (not to be confused with babyseals.com). i've become obsessed with this site. just ask the boy. here's the skinny - every day at 9am MST, they post a new deal of the day. only one deal every day. that's it. and only a limited number of whatever said deal is. which makes me want to buy everything regardless of what it is just because it means i'm getting one before they're sold out. like, why would i ever want this, but i bet if it showed up on babysteals.com, i'd buy it anyway.

and to top it off, they tell me right there how much of a discount i'm getting on the item. which makes me REALLY want to buy whatever it is just so i can say i got a great deal on it. they've really tapped into the female psyche on this one..

i'd rather not talk about how many times "baby steals" has shown up in our last few credit card bills...

2. milo's so (not) excited to have a baby sister that he's willingly offered to help sample some baby things for us. which is great because he's bite size, just like the baby will be

bassinet: check

baby sling: check

he didn't quite fit into the sleep sack i just made, but it's a little girly for him anyway...

then the boy reminded me that milo walks around where there's lots of poop. and he rolls in dirt on a regular basis. and then i reminded the boy that our baby will most likely try EATING poop and dirt at some point. and that's when i won that discussion.

...and then i secretly went upstairs and started the washing machine.

how big is your purse?

you know how sometimes stores attach their pens to fake flowers and stick them in a pot on the checkout counter so you can never find them when you're ready to sign the credit card form and you stand there waiting for them to give you a pen and they look at you like you're stupid and say, "uh.. the pens are in the pot, dummy"?

don't be fooled - stores not only do this to make you feel like an idiot, but they also like to make it harder for people to pocket their pens, which i guess i can understand. although, not to sound like i'm a pro at thieving or anything, but stealing a flower pen just seems like a more exhilarating and rewarding challenge to me and not all that much harder than stealing a normal pen sans silk petals. plus, then you have a nice little craft project you can tell your friends you made to impress them.

what's even funnier is when you need a key to get into a public restroom and they tie that key to something like a ping-pong paddle thinking that you can't steal it if there's a paddle involved. i mean, if someone's got it in their head that there's nothing cooler than swiping the only access to a public bathroom, you better believe taking a key AND a bonus prize paddle only adds to the fun and honestly isn't that much harder to walk away with.

at least, those were my thoughts until i asked for the bathroom key at a little grocery store in albuquerque the other day. now these guys have it figured out!

AN ENTIRE COOLING VENT!! talk about a mistrust in your customers.

am i really all nose??

so, we've had this picture up as our computer desktop for forever and i actually really like it because i think the boy looks dee-lish (sorry...should have warned you that comment was coming BEFORE it came.)

unfortunately, you can see right up my nose. not so dee-lish. so, on our desktop, i kept discreetly covering my nostril with one of the computer icons. and the boy kept moving it back into its proper place without realizing that it was actually serving a new purpose now (dang you organization freaks!)

i finally couldn't take looking up my own nose every time i turned the computer on anymore, so i changed the picture. the boy came home and asked why i changed it.

"weren't you tired of staring at my nostril?" i asked him.

"umm.... have you not seen this picture?" was his response. of course i'd seen the picture! i chose it to replace miss big nose! i walked around behind him to take another look. of all the pictures we have, this is the one i chose.

and then a sad truth hit me - i guess i really do subconsciously like looking up my own nose.

reaping the fruits of my labor

might i remind you of my mini garden that we started at the beginning of the summer?

i'm very proud to say that we've actually seen some veggies grow in our garden this year! allow me to introduce some of the players:

the lovely mrs. tomato (we've had a lot of mr. tomatoes too, but trust me, they all look the same. no offense tomatoes)

mr bell pepper, the old so-and-so


and, of course, the sultry miss jalepeno


you might notice that our garden had a theme this year. only veggies that are red were allowed to grow. all other colors immediately died.

another theme that might not be so immediately obvious (but makes sense given the mini garden they came out of) is that they all look like this compared to a regular sized apple:


what in the?? i keep telling the boy that we should open a stand at the farmer's market next year called the mini flagg farmlet. we only sell mini veggies. i really think it's what people are looking for.

on the one hand, you can't deny how cute those little guys are! on the other hand, i'm starting to really worry about what in the world kind of baby i'm capable of cooking up...

sew, very old one. sew like the wind!

there's a little something called "pregnancy brain" where you get forgetful and spacey during your pregnancy for unknown reasons. well, i've gone completely beyond pregnancy brain and have just plain lost my sense of logic.

(interjection: i know you're worried about my blog turning into nothing but posts about my baby, but don't fret. it'll actually be posts about ME dealing with my baby...)

it all happened when i made the mistake of looking at baby shoes on etsy (i seriously almost started crying they were so cute). i knew then i was going to be in trouble. so, my solution to not spending millions of dollars on baby clothes? why, make them myself, of course!

this might seem like a fairly reasonable thing to do for some people, but ask me when was the last time i even picked up (or wanted to pick up) a needle... i do have vague memories (i've repressed most of them) of making a quilt in high school for a church project, and that was not fun... but, what better time than now to stretch my sewing wings?? my grandma would be so proud of me.

so, i bought a lousy used sewing machine online and spent days, literally days - trying to figure the dumb thing out. finally, i decided to visit our old friend will drake to see what he could do for me. our conversation went something like this:

wd: this sewing machine is crap. it's never gonna work right and i ain't gonna even try to fix it
cf: oh
wd: sewing machines just aren't made like they used ta be. they're all crap. now i got this one here that'll last you hundreds of years and you can do anything to it. you can throw it on the ground and jump on it if you want and it'll still sew like new. it's for $589 but i'll give it to you for $210 because of the economy....

he then started going off on how he's been trying to get his competitor's information out of the yellow pages, and then he started vacuuming his counter, and then he talked to his granddaughter on the phone for a little while about how school was... i love that man.

so, $210 later, i have an apparently accident-proof sewing machine. which i think is good for me. plus, it guilts me in to actually learning to sew!!

i started with what anybody would start with for simplicity.. a baby blanket. and look how cute:


just ignore the fact that the seams are ridiculously uneven,


i had no idea how to "finish" the ends,


and i just noticed while i was taking this picture that i got a pin permanently stuck in the side of the blanket... totally baby-proof.


so, since i had clearly mastered the art of blanket-making, i moved on to pants. halfway through my pants project, the boy very gently noted to me, "you better hope she gets your dad's long legs..."


and then, not only did i realize that i didn't want my baby to dress like a skater at quite such a young age, but it also occurred to me that i had sewn the back of the pants to the front of the pants anyway, so that project got scrapped.

by now, my stubbornness had set in and i HAD to conquer this sewing thing! so, i built my confidence up by trying some more little yoga pants (the boy's not convinced that our child will be doing yoga by 3-6 months). and they actually turned out!

so with confidence in check (sort-of), i moved on to an actual pattern to make a dress, that i thought was marked "easy" but i realized after the fact that it never actually says that anywhere... have you ever realized how sewing is a foreign language? seriously. how am i supposed to translate this:

"turn back edge to INSIDE along outer fold line, forming interfacing; press. baste close to inner edge."

uh... what?? who knew you used a turkey baster in sewing... (p.s. turns out you don't).

so, i threw the directions away and decided i'd just make up my own directions knowing the end result in mind. it's called "hacking."

but guess what? it actually turned out really really cute! (i wish i had a baby model to show it off for you) and the seams are straight(ish) and there are no pins hanging out of it. granted, i had a few extra pieces of fabric from the pattern that i still have no idea where they were supposed to go... but the baby's going to love it and she'll probably have a special cry that means "i want to wear that dress you made for me."

it's finally happening!!

today's tangent has officially launched! (whew)

you know you're really really intrigued to see what it's all about...and i'm really really intrigued to see what you think about it.

please, sign up to get your daily dose of random and let me know what you think! if it makes you want to poke your eyes out, don't worry - it's super easy to unsubscribe.

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what's it gonna be?

we had our 20 week ultrasound on wednesday to find out if we're having a little bitty this

or a little bitty this

the doctor asked us if we wanted to know, which has been a question we've been asking ourselves for awhile now, too. we both got cold feet and couldn't remember at that crucial moment if we had decided yes or no. luckily, we anticipated such a freeze and brought a card that i had made a little while back and was saving for a special occasion (little did i know, it'd be my OWN special occasion) and envelope for the doc to write the gender down and seal for us to open when we were ready.

we drove all the way home without even talking about what was inside the sealed envelope. then, when we got home, the boy immediately went upstairs to take a nap. what?? at a time like this, you need a nap?? then, when he woke up, a bunch of people stopped by unannounced. what?? all you people decide to show up at that crucial moment just because??

when we finally got a minute to ourselves later that night (which seriously felt like years later to a person with my level of patience...), we went and sat on our porch swing, where we got engaged (seemed like an appropriate place) and opened the card excited for whatever it had to say

summer happenings

i feel like a bajillion beautifully random things always happen during the summers. and i feel like i'm always too distracted by the sunshine to document them each individually as they happen.

and so, i've created a collage (every time i write that word, i wonder why it's spelled the same as the place where you get your higher education. and then every time i end up remembering that i probably didn't deserve that communications degree from collEge) of the fun summer happenings thus far:

1. one of my favorite things about boulder is that buskers are still allowed. there's nothing quite like walking past a xylophone concert, alpine horn players (riccola!), balloon makers and people riding on really tall unicycles trying to convince an audience that they're about to swallow a sword, all on your way to lunch. for the most part, the buskers hibernate during the winter and then emerge with even more daring tricks and commentary. my favorite busker to date:

the hula hooping violinist. come on, does it get much better than that?

2. yes, yes it does. exhibit b- the troll car:

this car is covered from head to toe...err..front to back with trolls! what in the world? can i please just remind everyone how freaky troll dolls are in the first place? they were such a big hit and everybody's parents were buying them and all the kids were having nightmares about them. probably lots of psychiatrist bills these days can be attributed to trolls. here's a reminder in case you've forgotten how creepy these guys are

anyway, who in their right mind would glue these things all over their car?? on the plus side, i guess they'd scare any sort of burglar off. but on the down side, you have trolls glued all over your car


(and yes, i was in babies r us. talk about an overwhelming amount of baby "necessities" guaranteed to give any expectant mother a heart attack! especially after seeing the troll car. it was an emotional day.)

3. i'm clearly not mature enough to be a home owner. somehow (the boy still hasn't confirmed...or denied...anything), our guest bedroom toilet split right down the middle. what in the? so, we got to go toilet shopping! in case you need some pointers when buying a toilet, look for the one that can flush the most golf balls.



4. summer is the time for camping. in cabins. where bats fly around your room while you sleep. i woke up at 4am or so sensing something fluttering around, and sure enough - this little guy was cruising in circles around our room. our nephews got a huge kick out of it.




until it was brought to our attention that the bat could have bitten us in our sleep and that we could die of rabies... moral of the story, don't take bats flying around in your house lightly! my file at the ob/gyn now reports that i've been stung by a bee and potentially bitten by a bat and given 8 (with 3 more to come) rabies shots! so far, i haven't craved any blood, but i'll keep you posted.

5. even though i feel a little bit bad that our poor child will be a christmas baby/bee/bat, i'm actually very grateful that i'm only 4 months preggers instead of 9 in the middle of the summer. my condolences to all summer baby mommas.